AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350

"If you're looking for a great processor for a HTPC or simply for lower levels of heat and power consumption then the BE2350 represents an excellent value at just under $100. If you're looking for performance or a processor to overclock this probably isn't your best bet. You're probably better off saving an extra $30 or so and just buying the cheapest AMD Athlon X2 that is built off 65nm process and uses the Brisbane core. Currently the X2 3600+ can be had for about $60 through MWave, which represents a great value and is about $40 cheaper than the BE2350. Not to mention it'll probably overclock just as well. But if you're wanting to shave off some power and heat, then this is a good option from AMD. Hopefully it won't be too long until we see something much more exciting from AMD in the not too distant future."

"...AMD lost the processor performance competition when Intel launched their Core 2 Duo line of processors. However, they've now created two new battlegrounds to take the fight to, and if they've been criticized for being too quiet the past year, AMD is trying to gain ground by trumpeting superior price point and thermals. Of course, this is a move that will not work in the high-end enthusiast market, and we're sure that AMD knows this. Most of AMD's tactics thus far have been to maintain a competitive product line up until the much anticipated Phenom processors arrive for the desktop."

"The new AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 processor brings a new, lower price point to the modern AMD dual-core processor. Intel currently has no direct answer to this kind of performance at these power levels giving AMD a chance to fall into some unique system designs like home theater PCs and even some small form-factor boxes. Customers can once again rejoice in the fruits of competition."

"Then there's the fact I was able to get our review unit cranked up to 3GHz with nothing but a stock air cooler and a slight voltage bump. The low-power aspect goes out the window when the BE-2350 is flipping bits at 3003MHz and 1.425V, but then this puppy morphs into a high-performance processor the equal of anything AMD has to offer. I don't want to overstate things on this front; the Core 2 Duo E4300 is also known for ample overclocking headroom, and a 3GHz Athlon X2 isn't likely to match a Core 2 at 2.5GHz in overall performance. Still, for a cheap CPU that you may not mind frying in an evil overclocking experiment, the BE-2350 is hard to match, if most of them end up overclocking like ours did."

"The Pentium Dual Core E2160, though, is usually equally fast or slightly faster in many benchmarks. This comes at the cost of slightly higher idle and load power requirements. Our long-term SYSmark 2004 runs prove that the Athlon X2 BE-2350 system required 14% less energy than the Pentium Dual Core E2160 after 60 minutes, and the difference was still 10% after a 90-minute run. Our tests also showed that the BE-2350 is not a relabeled Athlon 64 X2 4000+, which also has 2x 512 kB L2 cache and 2.1 GHz clock speed. Although the idle power requirements are equal, the regular Athlon 64 X2 consumes 18% more energy under load. The results also underscore the fact that AMD processors have a lower idle power requirements than Intel's CPUs, and that the power requirements under load can be higher."